What was Lost
by nearlybandoms
Summary: Helena Halliwell's first five years at Hogwarts were some of the best of her life. However, all of that comes crashing down when her younger sister Cheryl disappears and her family practically falls apart at the seams. She is left a shell of her former self. However, with the help of the rebellious Marauders, especially one sixth-year Sirius, she may find what she lost. (Sirius/OC)


**0.1**

Silence. That's what my life has boiled down to, a constant state of silent anxiety. An inescapable dread that my life was continuously spiralling out of control and it was simultaneously my own fault but I was helpless. My own fate had little to nothing to do with me. At least, that's what it had taken a summer to convince myself. My entire vacation away from Hogwarts was spent in a continuous cycle of sleeping, brooding, hardly eating, crying, and sitting in introspective silence. Each day continued the same. I had lost contact with all of my friends. Every week their letters arrived and every week a new piece of parchment was accumulating on my bedside table inside of my almost equally as silent and dreary household. I guess that's how I ended up like this, sitting inside an empty cabin on the Hogwarts express on my way to my dreaded sixth year, the shell of who I used to be.

This time for the past five years I had been filled with nothing but excitement. The joy of beginning another new and magical year at Hogwarts was beyond thrilling. I would finally get to see my best friends and Ravenclaw peers after a long summer spent amongst muggles like my mother. They were the ones who understood me. I had my father, a fellow Ravenclaw alumni, but he worked almost constantly, especially this summer. Who could blame him though? My house was the last place that I wanted to be too. People typically told me I was pretty fun to be around due to a bright, accepting, and original demeanor; a perfect fit for the Ravenclaw ideology. Now, I was anything but a Ravenclaw, it felt like. I'd seen my closest friends Levi, Delilah and Carson sitting in an empty compartment with an empty seat I knew was reserved for me. My heart clenched when I saw that seat. It represented the five years of friendship that they were willing to preserve despite the numerous unanswered letters I'd received this summer. Each handwritten parchment held more and more worry and concern and each made it harder to neglect replying. I was a terrible person. It was selfish of me but I couldn't handle speaking to them again after the way I'd treated them over the summer so instead of joining them in their compartment I walked hurriedly past and found an empty one for myself at the back of the train.

It was cold and I was completely and utterly alone. My mind wandered to thoughts of my dear, beloved younger sister. She was probably just like me, cold and alone. This is where the trouble that lead to my entire family's downward spiral had begun. I arrived home from my fifth year at Hogwarts, excited as ever to see my family again. Of course, my sister didn't know of our family's magical roots due to the fact that she herself did not inherit our father's abilities as I had. She simply thought that I was going to an all girls preparatory school for advanced studies in marine biology. It was a flimsy excuse, but it worked and she never questioned it. She wrote me frequently, it just took my dad apprehending it and sending it by owl instead of typical mail carriers before she sent it for it to reach me. However, a few weeks before the end of school, in the middle of my O.W.L.s her letters had abruptly stopped. I didn't pay much mind to it however.

It wasn't until I arrived home near the end of May to find that she had run away from home a few weeks prior. Apparently she found out that I wasn't actually at a girls' prep school when she tried to send me a letter and received one back from the headmistress of the actual school saying that there'd never been anyone under the name of Helena Halliwell at her school before. After confronting my father he spilled the truth about my whereabouts and his blood-status. My mother was furious as she was the one that wished to keep it a secret from her until she was older and wouldn't be envious of my situation. Being a muggle herself she thought she could understand her better than my father and I. I suspect that Cheryl thought herself responsible for the sudden uptake in nightly arguments between our parents in the weeks before I returned from school. She left in the middle of the night on a warm May evening, leaving behind only a short note. I'd reread it thousands of time and the crumpled remains were currently stuffed in my pocket. My hands instinctively went to the pocket of my sweatshirt to make sure the yellowed paper was still there. I couldn't help but pull it out and scan over the scrawled and frantic handwriting one more time.

 _Dear Mum, Dad, and Lena,_

 _I'm sorry I'm such a nuisance and I'm sorry that I've done this to our family. Maybe it'd be for the better if I was somewhere else. Please don't look for me, just know that I'm okay. I love you all._

 _Cheryl_

Tears pricked dully at the backs of my eyes. I'd practically memorized the letter by now. If only my parents had told me. I could've stopped her. I believe her that she is safe. However, nothing would reassure me more than knowing she was safe at home. Instead, I spent every waking moment worried about her wellbeing. It got to the point where I had basically stopped worrying about my own physical and mental state all together. My cheeks had hollowed significantly and my mental state was clearly on the decline, inching further and further away from stability with every breath. My subconscious tells me that if I had known I would've been able to stop her.

When I arrived home from the train station by cab my parents sat in the living room in silence, a pointed glare being the only interaction that the two shared for probably an hour before I arrived. My mood dropped immediately and my body flushed with worry. I recalled asking them what was the matter in a tentative and shaking voice. When they explained that my beloved younger sister had been missing for three weeks my sketchbook clattered from my hands and landed with a thud onto the hardwood floors. My mother started to cry. My father disregarded her and instead rose to give me a hug. This was the first sign to me that anything was different between them. Typically, my father would immediately comfort my mother but this time he brushed her off like a piece of dust that clung to his jacket. I was in too much of a state of shock to do anything but stand there. Burly arms embraced my small frame and rubbed my back soothingly but my mind was racing too fast to process any of it. My life hadn't been the same since then.

My room, stacked floor to ceiling with my favorite records from muggle bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones now felt foreign and strange. My earth-toned tapestries were falling from their posts above my bed. They hung there all summer, undisturbed. I slept on the floor most nights anyways, a stack of pictures of Cheryl and I when we were children in hand. Sleeping in my own bed felt too normal, like I'd be disregarding the current situation and be accepting a life without Cheryl as normal. The girl with curlier hair than mine and innocent green eyes was only two years younger than me but I still felt an almost maternal instinct to protect her. I'd surely been through a great deal more than her but that wasn't her fault. A 14 year old with little to no experience in the real world could not be alone out there. The world was dark and twisty and there was so much brewing below the surface that she could never comprehend. A murderous, elitist, and sadistic dark wizard with powers unseen in the wizarding world was on the rise and he threatened not only the magic community but the entire world. The majority of the population wasn't even aware of the grave threat that they faced.

My whole life I liked to consider myself a kid that any parent would love to have. I made top marks at school, never acted out and was overall a pretty good kid. All that went down the drain over the summer, however. I had some muggle friends that I'd grown up with in primary school who believed the same thing as Cheryl had, that I was going to a prep school. I didn't see a single one of them once over the summer. All I did was sit inside and watch trashy TV. It was the only thing that I could use to distract myself from Cheryl. Certain records would make me think of a time I showed her a life-changing song. My sketchbook was partially filled with grotesque and dark images that I'd put down on the paper over the course of the summer. When I did leave the house it was mainly to go shopping for food to make sure that my parents didn't have another thing to fight over. I didn't have a license or that much money so I couldn't drive and taking cabs everywhere would be expensive. So everywhere I went was basically confined to walking distance from my house. When I did splurge on a cab it was typically to go out to a pub with the shitty fake ID that I'd paid way too much to have made in hand. I hadn't cast more than a few small spells all summer. It felt as if magic was what drove Cheryl away so I felt bad practicing even the smallest charms or spells. Those nights where I would sit amongst other inebriated teenagers watching local bands at the local pubs were the only interaction outside of my parents that I had all summer. My parents definitely noticed when I wouldn't come home until the late hours of the morning. However, I think they didn't say anything because they had bigger issues to deal with than some minor delinquency. The late nights muddled together and my summer mashed into one blur that was hard to discern one day from the next.

Last night was the only truly distinguishable night from the long string of them. My parents felt that in order for me to excel at school as I had for the past five years I had to go into it with a feeling of normalcy. My mother cooked my favorite, Chicken Alfredo with basil pesto, and bought some of my favorite cookie dough ice cream. However, there was no jovial conversation during dinner. There was only silence and the soft smacking of our chewing. If anything this whole ordeal did nothing but make me feel worse about my situation and myself. I'd never felt so much self-pity in so little time before. I was supposed to be stronger than this. The only conversation that was had during the dinner was my father asking if I was excited for potions class this year. He excitedly told me about how potions had been his favorite class throughout all of his seven years at Hogwarts. He described his favorite lesson in detail. His professor had been Professor Seville, a young man not much older than the majority of the sixth years. All the girls fawned over him relentlessly while all the boys wanted to be like him. He had been a 7th year prefect when my father was a first year. The amount of detail with which my father was able to recount his first time meeting the older boy was astounding as it'd been close to 49 years. I made this point clear to my father and he jokingly reminded me that he was "40 years old". A smile stretched across his face, accompanied by the faintest hint of a laugh. That's what made that dinner so memorable. That one glimpse of happiness. It was hope; hope that things could return to normal, hope that tomorrow Cheryl would walk through our front door and that our lives would return to the way they were before all of this happened. Deep down all three of us knew that there was no way that was going to happen.

I was pulled suddenly from my reverie by a knock on the compartment door. Through the little glass pane I could see the trolley witch with a smile on her face outside the door. I didn't have the will to get up or the gold to buy anything right now so I simply resigned to giving her a small smile and shaking my head sadly. The older woman gave me a sympathetic smile before turning back to her cart and beginning to holler her offerings of sweets down the corridor to the next compartment. Memories of eating chocolate frogs and comparing which notable wizard we each received with Carson, Delilah and Levi flashed through my mind. A small smile tugged on my lips as I remembered the time Carson accidentally ate a handful of Ernie Bott's beans and when Levi went to buy some candy but was interrupted by the girl he fancied asking for something that he dropped all his golden coins on the floor at her feet. Oh how I wished those could be the times I knew were still to come. Everything was just so inherently different now and no matter how hard I tried there was nothing I could do to fix it.

An hour or so later I felt the train lurch to a halting stop. Several excited voices started to fill the compartments and different cars as my peers flooded the halls. There were so many familiar faces that passed by. I couldn't help but wonder, would I look to them as different as I felt? I waited a good five minutes from when the last person passed by to stand and collect my things. The familiar itch of the cotton robes covered my body once more and I was oddly comforted. It was like receiving a hug from a beloved yet distant relative. My footsteps echoed as I hurried out of the train to catch up with the crowd of people getting into carriages to go to the castle. The first carriage I found contained a sixth year Gryffindor that I'd seen passing in the halls a few times. I didn't know her name but she was fairly pretty with reddish hair that fell past her shoulders and framed her slender features. She smiled sweetly at me and gestured for me to join her. It only took a few moments of hesitation before I climbed in next to her. I used to be so confident. I guess that was another piece of my personality that I had lost in the wind over the past few months. We didn't say much. We kept giving each other glances that let me know that she knew who I was but was unable to put a face to the name, just as I was with her. She was the first to get out of the carriage when we got to the castle, which I was grateful for. If I knew she was behind me, watching me get out, I probably would've fallen flat on my face. I planned on thanking her before we left but by the time I was securely on the ground she was already running to catch up with a smaller group before us, her hair swishing gracefully behind her.

A breath of air that I didn't know I'd been holding released heavily from my lips as my eyes landed on the castle for the first time in months. I felt like I was going insane. I hadn't even gone inside yet but already something was different. Was it possible that the castle I'd grown up in could have grown with me too? I told myself this was impossible seeing as I was so small and insignificant in the grander scheme of all the amazing things that were happening within the walls of this school. Some of the finest witches and wizards were being groomed here and we didn't even know it yet. I hardly thought that I'd be one of those. Perhaps last year when I was at the top of my class and the favorite of most of my professors, but not this year. Things like that change all the time. Unfortunately, whether we want it to happen or not, so do we.

 **A/N: Hello everyone and thank you for reading my new story! I hope you all enjoy it! Let me know what all of you think and I'll try to have the next update up soon! (Also, sorry I'm so terrible at writing summaries. It is exceptionally difficult within such a small space. However, I hope the story can prove itself from the summary!) See you all in the next chapter!**

 **\- nearlybandoms**


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